It’s wonk city, folks. If you don’t have any patience, don’t read on. But if you don’t read on, don’t blame us if the Peterson-Pew Commission takes your retirement and your medicine and leaves you with $5.00 gasoline in three years. Look, finance really isn’t complicated. If you want to work out the financing for [...]
Entries from September 24th, 2011
Fixing the Economy and the Budget–for the People
June 29th, 2010 · Comments Off · Capitalism, Economics, jobs, Politics, taxes, Wall Street
Tags: Bush's national debt·Clinton economy·deficits·increases in the national debt·job creation·job losses to outsourcing abroad·manufacturing·structural deficits·tariffs·trillion-dollar deficits
The Disturbing Nonsense of the Powerful Right Wing Media
June 28th, 2010 · Comments Off · Entertainment, Media, Politics
The Right Wing media has an overwhelming advantage over the commentary that comes from the Left. First of all, 90% of all radio programming that involves commentary is Right Wing commentary. That is, factually, 91% of all radio talk programming or commentary is identified as conservative talk radio. They don’t try to hide that they [...]
Tags: Corporatist media. Right Wing media networks·Fox News Channel·Neoconservative propaganda·Right wing media·Right Wing radio
Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Ryan!
June 26th, 2010 · Comments Off · Capitalism, Economics, jobs, Politics
Oh boy! Ohboyoboyoboyoboy! Just when you think you have heard every lie, every phony claim, every stinking innuendo, every slavish following of the superstitiously silly, wretchedly excessive Rich Right Wing of the Oligarchic Obstructive Republican Party…you get another surprise. Saturday morning, June 26, 2010, the Republicans, and their new puppet, Paul Ryan, an embarrassment to [...]
Tags: cutting the budget·deficit spending·Democratic budget·Medicare reimbursements for doctors·national debt·Representative Paul Ryan·Republican budgets·Republican response·Republican spending·Senator Scott Brown·unemployment insurance
Don’t Think “Green Energy;” Think Green Jobs.
June 24th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Capitalism, Economics, energy, jobs, Politics, taxes
We have a couple of pieces of legislation in that great frozen melting pot called a Senate that deserve your attention and, frankly, the passage of which deserve a march on Washington. The Great Bush-Cheney Energy Deregulation Oil Spill and the lack of meaningful jobs in a sputtering and failing economy dictate that we look [...]
Tags: alternative sources of energy·clean energy programs·energy independence·green energy jobs·inheritance taxes·jobs·unemployment
Do We Run the Military or Does the Military Run Us?
June 22nd, 2010 · Comments Off · International affairs, Lobbying, Politics, wars and militarism
In the living memory of many seniors in this country, a relatively unpopular President of the United States fired one of the most popular Generals of all time. Harry Truman had been a minor Senator who became President because the most popular President in our history died. Roosevelt had been considered, and still is by [...]
Tags: Afghanistan·ending the war·General McCrystal·government control of military·Iraq·military affairs·President Obama·the War in Afghanistan
Budget Cuts–Coming After Your Social Security
June 20th, 2010 · Comments Off · Capitalism, Economics, jobs, Lobbying, Media, Politics, taxes, Wall Street, wars and militarism
It is time to pay attention to the Peterson Commission. And you had better pay attention and tell your friends and have them tell their friends. Because the Peterson Commission is coming to get your Social Security. Not yours…yours. Yes, you there, the relatively young person who is about to start gathering funds to retire. [...]
Tags: budget deficits·government cost-cutting·the economy·the Great Recession·the Peterson-Pew Commission·The Presdent's Commission on Reducing the Federal Budget Deficit
Disaster in West Virginia
June 17th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, energy, Human Rights, Politics, Populism
There is no way to discuss oil spills without stopping to make a comment or two on the crime, the rape of the Appalachian mountains for coal. Mountain Top Removal, so specific a technique that it has its own name, not just a description is so devastating that environmentalists commonly refer to it simply as [...]
Tags: coal corporation lobbying·coal in electrical generation·Coal lobbyists·dangerous mining practices·Massey Coal·Massey Energy·mining·mining lobbyists·mining risks·Mountain Top Removal·MTR·reckless mining·utility companies·utility company lobbyists
On Oil Spills and Government Spoils
June 16th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, Lobbying, Politics, Populism, Wall Street
This is about our country.We have been through the Second Age of the Moguls and it was worse than the first, if that is possible. In those days, there were no regulations, less than ten percent income tax, often as not ignored, and a country just beginning to feel the environmental weight of massive forests [...]
Tags: big oil·billionaires·BP oil spill·Bush Department of Interior·economic elite·Gale Norton·government royalties·J. Steven Griles·Minerals Management Service corruption·mining companies·offshore drilling·oil lobbyists·payoffs to government officials·payoffs to oil companies·Republican obstruction
The Angry American
June 13th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Corporations and Industry, Economics, Populism, taxes
There has been no time in recent memory when so many people, so many Americans, are very, very angry. They have every right to be angry. A large group of Americans…primarily members and elected officials of the Republican Party…have confiscated a large part of the American treasury. Now they want to take even more. What’s [...]
Tags: Bush administration·Bush-Cheney Administration·deficits·national debt·Neoconservative political programs·Republican deficit spending
“Please, Sir, May I Have Another!”
June 11th, 2010 · Comments Off · Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, jobs, Labor, Lobbying, Media, Politics, taxes
The Republicans in Congress have their paddles out and are ready, if we let them, to make us walk the line again, while the Neocon frat boys in the Chamber of Commerce, in Congress and on Wall Street deliver a good spanking like the one they handed the country in 2007-2008. Yes, these cartoon characters, [...]
Tags: Corporatism·jobs·Neocons·Neoconservative obstruction·political gamesmanship·Right Wing obstruction·tax cuts·unemployment insurance
Here’s How Right Wing Obstruction Affects You Personally.
June 10th, 2010 · Comments Off · Corporations and Industry, Economics, energy, Health Care, jobs, Lobbying, Politics, taxes, Wall Street
Life is not a newsreel, someone once said. It is not a sound bite. It is not the mere reporting of Republican Reich Wing obstruction. It is real life–life and death, injury and loss, jobs and unemployment, homes and homelessness, wealth and poverty. There are 290 bills passed by the House of Representatives pending in [...]
Tags: Democratic legislation·House of Representatives·Nancy Pelosi·Neocon obstruction·Republican obstruction·Senate filibusters·Senate obstruction·Senator McConnell
Helen Thomas and the Problem of Palestine
June 9th, 2010 · Comments Off · Human Rights, International affairs, wars and militarism
Helen Thomas is a long-time, award-winning, ground-breaking reporter and columnist for the Associated Press, one of the remaining news services. She has, for many years, lead the press conferences at the White House, asking the first question and often ending the press conferences. She is not technically a member of the White House press corps [...]
Tags: Arab countries·Hamas·Helen Thomas·Israel-Arab wars·Israeli-Palestinian conflicts·Palestine·persecution of the Jews·PLO·the state of Israel
The Roberts’ Supreme Court and the End of Democracy
June 6th, 2010 · Comments Off · Corporations and Industry, Courts and the Law, Labor, Lobbying, Politics
With all the other problems facing this country, one that we should not have to face in 2010 is the validity and honesty of our Supreme Court. Over the long history of the country, through the earliest days when transportation and communication were long and tedious, when modern appliances and inventions made life less complex, [...]
Tags: corporate influence on the Supreme Court·the Bush Supreme Court·the Citizens United decision·the Supreme Court·wrong Supreme Court decisions
State of the Nation — June 2010
June 4th, 2010 · Comments Off · Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, energy, jobs, Lobbying, Media, Politics, taxes
Where are we? We’ve got a bunch of tea party nuts…let’s be frank…running around saying that the country is becoming a fascist sate and another segment of the same nuts or even those same nuts themselves contradicting what they just said by saying we’re becoming Communist or Socialist. It’s difficult even to explain, let alone [...]
Tags: Corporatism·jobs·Liberal and progressive legislation·Lobbying·Neoconservative obstruction·Republican lies·Senate Republican obstruction·taxes·unions
A Presidential Commission–To Cut Your Benefits
June 2nd, 2010 · Comments Off · Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, Politics, Populism, taxes, Wall Street, wars and militarism
“Houston, we have a problem….” “We’re out of money.” Our fiscal problems have at last reached emergency status. The Republicans, yes, the Republicans–in a purely partisan way–over the last 30 years finally put us so deeply in debt that we must now address the situation before it it too late. The President, no FDR or [...]
Tags: budget deficits·budgets and spending·cutting back on Social Security·cutting government spending·cutting Medicare·cutting the military budget·government austerity programs·national debt·national debt crisis·tax increases